The bedroom door eased open. Vera stood in the light. “Matthew?” she called gently towards the bed.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m up.”
“Yes,” she murmured, looking me over. “There’s some people here I think you should talk to.”
“Who are they?”
“They might be able to help.”
“Who are they?”
“Aldermen.”
Aldermen.
I loathe the Aldermen. Not the fluffy, cocktail-sausage-and-champagne aldermen, they weren’t the problem. The other Aldermen. The ones who only come out at night. Protectors of the city. The ones who do whatever it is that is necessary for the city to be safe; and right there was the problem. Sometimes “necessary” didn’t mean “right”.
I am scared of the Aldermen.
And the problem about Aldermen was that they never came out for the little things.
There were three of them, but none of them. On the surface they looked like escapees from the English Civil War, all big hats and black coats with fat black buttons. When the coats came off, the truth underneath was no better: pinstriped grey suits, silver ties and bright pink shirts designed to suggest the wearer’s uniqueness, and which every fashionable young suit wore to work. There were little, little hints as to their nature, once you bothered to look; one had on his right fist a collection of rings, one of which was burnt with the symbol of the twin keys. Pinned above a silk handkerchief sticking out of an old-fashioned waistcoat pocket, another had a small badge of a red dragon holding a shield. A third had the two red crosses, the smaller one etched into the upper left-hand corner of its larger twin, that were stamped on the emblem of the Corporation of London. Secret societies are extra-thrilling when you can feel the smugness of wearing them on your sleeve and still not being noticed.
They looked at me, we looked at them. I got the feeling they weren’t happy either.
Then one said, “So which are you?”
Vera rolled her eyes. The Alderman who’d spoken was young, male, and destined to rule the world. He had dark blond hair, slightly curled, a face just bordering on deeply tanned; bright blue eyes, a hint of freckle and a set of teeth you could have carved a piano with. If I hated Aldermen on basic principle, I hated
him
on direct observation.
“It’s not that simple . . .” began Vera, and I realised that she was also afraid. It takes a lot to frighten Vera.
“Of course it’s not,” said the middle man. He was older, with a little lined face from which boomed a great rolling voice, and neat precise hands. When he smiled, his every feature crinkled gnomicly, and so great were the welcoming good manners in his voice and every other aspect of his presence that I automatically didn’t believe them. “Mr Swift,” he said, “I am Mr Earle.”
He held out a hand only a few veins thicker than a sheet of paper. I shook it. “Mr Kemsley” - the young man with the teeth - “and Ms Anissina.” Ms Anissina was a woman in her mid-thirties, wearing clothes for a bright twenty-something and a hardened face fit for a dying warlord. Everything else about her was a frozen blank, neither hostile nor friendly, happy nor sad, lively nor subdued: just stone in a suit. Either she was a woman of hidden depths, or there was nothing beneath that marble surface to hide.
“I gather you’ve been injured; would you like to sit?”
I nodded, considering there was nothing to be gained from feigning a strength I obviously lacked. The one sofa had only space on it for three good friends. They left it all to me, and dispersed themselves casually around the room, just far enough apart to make it impossible to look at more than one Alderman at a time.
Mr Earle took up position by the window. I thought of sniper rifles and bright lights. He said, “Mr Swift, first may I offer my regrets that you have clearly been a victim of some violence.”
The words were the flat intonations of a busy priest, with three burials left to do before sunset and a migraine coming on. I said nothing. He didn’t care.
“How much are you aware of the remit of our duties, Mr Swift?”
“You’re the Aldermen,” I replied flatly. “A formation of like-minded individuals of a magical inclining whose responsibility is to ‘protect the city’, whatever that means.”
“Yes - you hit upon an ambiguity there.”
I shrugged.
“You are broadly correct. There is more to our mandate than a loose ‘protect the city’ and, naturally, more than simply ‘like-minded individuals’ in our exclusive choice of membership; but I don’t need to bore you with these details.”
I shrugged again, feeling skin stretch around the stitches, pain dribble down my spine. “I’m guessing you’re not here because you’re worried about my health.”
“Alas, that is not our main concern. I am sure you also understand our authority,” added Mr Earle, finding a point and sharpening it.
“I understand,” I replied, “that for nearly a thousand years there have been Aldermen watching over London, and that sooner or later anyone who opposes their will, dies. I know you serve the Midnight Mayor, who, if he exists, is the sacred protector of the city stones and whose heart beats in time to the rhythms of city life and so on and so forth.”
“You don’t believe in the Midnight Mayor?” he asked. “Interesting.”
“Is that what you meant by ‘authority’?”
“If you regard authority as merely being might, then yes. We could argue semantics all day, but I think you have the essential details. Well then, with all this in mind, perhaps I can ask you some questions. Where were you last night, Mr Swift, between one and three a.m.?”
I stared at him in surprise, which threatened to turn to anger. “Being stabbed by spectres,” I replied.
“But
where
, Mr Swift?”
“Willesden.”
“What were you doing in Willesden?”
“I told you. Being stabbed.”
“Mr Swift . . .” He sighed, then asked, “Is this your watch?”
He held up a sad, burnt piece of fabric and metal, 99p from a vendor on the street, with a faded Mickey Mouse behind the frozen hands. I didn’t ask how he’d got it, didn’t blame Vera for giving it to him. “Yes,” I said.
“I assume it was damaged during this . . . encounter with the spectres?”
“It stopped when I was attacked, yes.”
“At two twenty-five in the morning?”
“I wasn’t paying much attention to the time.”
“No, no, of course not. No, naturally, why should you?” On the edge of something else, he asked, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Are you sure? Vera, my darling, a cup of tea?”
“I’ll put the kettle on,” growled Vera.
I could feel electricity buzzing through the walls, taste it on the air. A twitch of my fingers and I could wrap myself in it, send spinning mains lightning through the room, cranked up with all the will of a sorcerer’s magic to the point where flesh would pop. I said, “Maybe I would like tea.”
“Tea all round,” sighed Vera.
“Coffee for me,” said Mr Kemsley. “Decaf, if you’ve got it.”
The head of the Whites, one of the largest organisations of magicians, painters and warlocks to burrow beneath the streets of London, smiled through her gritted teeth, and turned on the kettle.
“I don’t suppose anyone saw this encounter in Willesden?” asked Mr Earle.
“A large number of people, I suspect. But they wouldn’t know what to make of it.”
“Anyone . . . of alternative inclining?”
“I’m guessing you’re not referring to sex, biology or morals?”
“Forgive me, Mr Swift, but in my line of work it can pay to be careful in one’s choice of language.”
“You can ask whoever attacked me. They’ll know what happened.”
“Ah, yes. And I suppose you have no idea
who
attacked you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see his face? Or speak to him?”
“No. It was all done by remote. Mr Earle?”
“Mr Swift?”
“Why do you care?”
Mr Kemsley almost snorted. Our eyes flashed to him and for a moment, he met our gaze, and cringed away from it.
Mr Earle said, carelessly, “Oh, you understand how it is, Mr Swift. After the business with Bakker and the Tower, sorcerers are in short supply. And sorcerers with . . . if you’ll forgive me saying it . . . such a casual attitude as yours towards death, resurrection and the telephonic system cause us understandable concern, whenever anything bad befalls them.”
“So you’re just here because you care,” I said, letting the sarcasm show.
“Something like that.”
“Mr Earle?” we sighed, rubbing the bridge of our nose.
“Yes, Mr Swift?”
We looked up. He saw our eyes. Not just Mr Swift. My attitude towards the telephones had never been casual. “Mr Earle,” we said, “why do you keep referring to our attacker as ‘he’?”
He was good; but if he’d been brilliant, the question wouldn’t have slowed him down. It did now. “I suppose it must be my natural socio-cultural gender bias. Forgive me, my dear,” he added, nodding to Ms Anissina, whose face remained empty, and Vera, who scowled.
My bag was at the foot of the coffee table. The bottle with the spectre in it was on the end. There were three lights in the room, small bulbs churning out bright whiteness from the ceiling. I had my coat and shoes on. Mr Earle guessed what I was thinking. It didn’t take much effort.
“You don’t like Aldermen, do you, Mr Swift?”
“No,” I replied.
“Why, may I ask?”
“You only come out for the big things.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“When the peasants revolted in the reign of Richard II, the Aldermen came out to send the nightmares let loose by the fear of destruction back to sleep. When bubonic plague went through the streets, the Aldermen came out to stop the dead from walking. When the Fire of London gutted the city, the Aldermen made sure to save the precious treasures from the flames: the ravens in the tower, the London Stone - the altar supposed to have been laid by Brutus at the heart of the city, the heart of the damn country. When the bombs fell in the Blitz, the Aldermen were the ones who kept the things unearthed in the rubble from getting up and walking.”
“And . . . you seem to regard this in a negative light?”
“When the plague rats came to the city, the Aldermen made sure the dead didn’t walk. But they didn’t lift a finger to stop the dead from dying.”
“Ah - I see.”
“You are the protectors of the
stones
, Mr Earle, of the memory and the riches and the buildings of the city. You do not protect the people. So I’ve got to ask again - why are we having this conversation?”
Silence in the room, except for the slow bubbling of the kettle. Mr Kemsley shifted his weight against the wall. Ms Anissina took a slow, quiet breath. Mr Earle smiled. Skulls smile, and in the grave, Mr Earle will grin for ever at a joke only he could understand.
“I respect your honesty,” he said at last. This is something liars say. “You’ve been frank with me, I’ll be frank with you. Quite regardless of your personal condition, our concern is larger than the mere trifle of whether you live or die again. We couldn’t care less if you were attacked or who attacked you, except that there are . . . matters at work which require our involvement. And you, Mr Swift, seem to be currently sitting in the middle of them.”
“What matters?”
“I do not think I need trouble you by reporting them.”
“You already are troubling me.”
“Then I shall be brief to save us all further inconvenience. I believe you when you say you were attacked last night. I believe that you were hurt, I believe that you were afraid; all these things are empirically obvious. I believe that there are very few powers in this city, if not on this earth, which could make creatures such as the blue electric angels either hurt or afraid. I believe that the Midnight Mayor is one of them. I believe you attacked the Midnight Mayor. I believe you killed him.”
Strangely, we have never in our life been accused of killing a man.
I stared at Mr Earle and saw nothing but serious honesty in his little lined face. I looked at Ms Anissina and saw ice, I looked at Mr Kemsley and saw fire. I half-turned my head, looked at Vera and saw . . . for a moment, not Vera. Not quite: in the blinking of an eye, something else was standing where she should have been. Blink again, and there was Vera, face as empty as the mugs in her hand.
I looked back at Mr Earle and said, “You are totally shitting me.”
“I am quite serious,” he replied primly. “End of the line.”
A threat, as well as a statement.
“Why would I kill the Midnight Mayor?” I asked. “I don’t even believe he exists.”
“Come now,” he chided. “That’s a poor argument. You know the Old Bag Lady exists, you’ve met the Beggar King, you understand that Lady Neon stalks the lamplit streets and Fat Rat scuttles in the Underground. You of all . . . creatures . . . should know that the Midnight Mayor is real.”
“No,” I replied. “Besides, even if he were real, the Midnight Mayor can’t just die.”
“Of course not! The Midnight Mayor is an idea, a concept, a drifting title, a name that happens to carry with it some considerable power. No, no, no, the Midnight Mayor isn’t dead. Merely the man who happened to be him. There’s another Midnight Mayor out there, somewhere in the city, waiting to wake up and taste the carbon monoxide. Even you can’t kill an idea.”
Three faces carved with a pickaxe from old rough marble looked at me from around the room. I rubbed my aching shoulder, tried to shake the bumble-bees from my ears. “Exactly how did you reach the conclusion that I did this, if this has even been done?” I asked, trying not to look at my bag and the spectre-filled beer bottle.
“Well,” sighed Mr Earle, “apart from the obvious qualifications - I mean as regarding your capacity to kill, which is well established, and your abilities when it comes to this matter - there’s a great deal of circumstance.”